Ten rooms around an interior patio make up the Spanish Governor's Palace, the only aristocratic Spanish colonial residence left in Texas. Completed in 1749, this handsome limestone building served as the official headquarters and residence of the captain of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar. Despite the grand title 'palace,' the structure is modest by European standards — ten rooms arranged around an interior patio, with thick limestone walls, a carved wooden interior, and a distinctive keystone above the entrance door bearing the Habsburg royal coat of arms and the date 1749.
Successive Spanish and Mexican military governors occupied the building from its completion through 1821, when Mexican independence ended the colonial era. During the Republic of Texas period and American annexation, the building was sold into private hands and served, at various points, as a tailor shop, saloon, and even a schoolroom. In 1928, the city of San Antonio purchased and restored the building, opening it as a museum.
The interior patio garden, reconstructed based on colonial records, offers a cool, shaded retreat that feels astonishingly removed from the twenty-first century outside its walls.